This article is a review of LE WEEK-END.

“I’m a phobic object to you,” Nick Burrows (Jim Broadbent) After working together on TV mini-series THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA (1993), director Roger Michell and writer Hanif Kureishi have collaborated together on two previous films. Their latest effort portraying an intended romantic sojourn, for 30th anniversary wedding celebrations, has shorn Paris of its City of Lights fairy tale cinematic imagery. In its place is a subdued realism skirting pessimism. Props to Michell for his ability to move from the slick (NOTTING HILL, CHANGING LANES) to the almost grubby.

We meet Nick (Broadbent) and Meg Burrows (Lindsay Duncan) on the Eurostar from the UK to the French capital. Coming up to retirement age, the weekend getaway might have charged them with anticipation. Rather, they are engrossed in newspapers, mild bickering about forgotten Euros breaking the silence. Nick wanders around with a carrier bag of his stuff, and checks them into a grotty hotel. They had stayed many years before and the venue was hoped to kindle warm nostalgia. Not even granting him brownie points, Meg balks at the grim establishment, forcing him to relocate to a prestige suite at a gorgeous hotel. They are told Tony Blair stayed in that room. Nick glibly retorts, “As long as they’ve changed the sheets.” He is a professor and she a teacher; one assumes they have savings to cover the extravagance. Later, we get further insights into the financial situation. Two educators unable to afford a luxury of life might have been a social commentary tool in different hands; the filmmakers here opt to highlight inadequacies. And the painful observing of a long-term marriage on the downward slope is not shied away from; alleviated by humour and wry moments. Nick is hopelessly dependent on Meg. His verbal and physical romantic fumblings are regularly dryly put down, “It’s not love, it’s like being arrested”. Kureishi’s dialogue quietly crackles and zings sans attention seeking. Continuing from the director-writer team up on VENUS, there is further exploration of aging. Spousal affection has hardened in Meg, unhappy in family life. We get revelations on their now grown offspring. We are not in BEFORE SUNSET territory. Averting marital woe audience fatigue, Jeff Goldblum suddenly injects his over the top charisma; providing a gearshift. Morgan (Goldblum) accelerates the melancholia in the couple. A friend of Nick’s from university days, he is famous and wealthy in their philosophy field. Inviting them to a dinner party he’s having, they are unwittingly thrown into a social clique of financial and creative success, inadvertently grinding down their self esteem further. LE WEEK-END may seem dour, it is far from gloomy however. The scrutiny of a three decade marriage sardonically shields its zestfulness until the relatively energetic climax.